Good point. However, some users lose sight of this. Specifically encouraging users to participate in community wiki questions benefits the community as a whole.
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Bob KaufmanMar 9 '10 at 16:35

5

@Bob: I don't see how getting people to participate in CW questions is beneficial, or needed for that matter. Many questions marked as CW were made that way because they are very subjective and open-ended (i.e. they are designed more for fun, discussion, taking opinion polls, etc.). These sorts of questions already get huge numbers of contributions and attention.
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gnostradamusMar 9 '10 at 16:40

So if you provide a mediocre CW answer, and I edit it and improve it slightly, and someone else adds some stuff, and then I come back and fix the formatting, and then another guy shows up and corrects all the factual errors, and folks up-vote this now-great answer...

...then you should get another badge? How does this encourage the rest of us to participate...?

For a concrete example of what gnovice is getting at, take a look at my Super User profile... 6 silver badges for CW answers that are not only effectively worthless, but which I didn't even write. This "Philanthropist" idea would grant me yet another badge for doing nothing.

...which brings us back to gnovice's question: "Why do you need another one"? IMHO, folks who participate in CW answers now are doing so because they care about the subject; adding more gee-gaws does nothing useful for this.
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Shog9♦Mar 9 '10 at 16:50

I remember when we had to trudge uphill and barefoot a mile through the snow to get answers to our programming questions!
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gnostradamusMar 9 '10 at 17:38

@gnovice: You forgot to mention that we had to find the answers in books read by candlelight at the library which was uphill both ways and only open on Tuesdays. ::someone just old enough to have done research before the internet took over::
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dmckeeMar 9 '10 at 18:33